Motivation: "Intelligent and conceptually rich, the winner of the feature film award is discerned to a film, whose formal structure cleverly blurs discursive boundaries using image, sound and textual documentation. A remarkable work of cinema, which adheres to a cinematic lineage, but also one of activism, this film probes the ambiguity of prejudice along complex lines invoking imagination, knowledge (and gaps in knowledge), even the absurdity that often attends societal prescriptions of justice and order –and in so doing provokes necessary meditation on fear and xenophobia."

BEST MID-LENGHT DOCUMENTARY AWARD

ON THE EDGE OF LIFE (ALA HAFET ALHAYAT)
by Yaser Kassab (Syria, 2017)

Motivation: "Both lyrical and personal, this film relates an urgent and all-too-common experience today employing a unique cinematic language which creates an important space for contemplation. A story of survival in a contemporary moment of uncertainty, the film gathers textures and images which attest to displacement and struggle but also their representation. Generous, open, subtle and filled with unsuspecting poetry, this film demonstrates how art, cinema and human connection are integral to existence in dire circumstances."

BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY AWARD

DUELO
by Alejandro Alonso Estrella (Cuba, 2017)

Motivation: "Creating an entire cosmology from its precise and elegant form, the winner of the short film award relates a family story against the backdrop of an ancient ritual –merging both quotidian life and a sense of mystery and grandeur. The film emanates a powerful atmospheric quality with economy and vision."

GIAN PAOLO PAOLI AWARD FOR BEST ANTHROPOLOGICAL FILM

MAMAN COLONELLE
by Dieudo Hamadi (Dem. Rep. of Congo/France, 2017)

Motivation: "We wish to give the Gian Paolo Paoli Award to a film, whose strength, engagement and empathy reposition anthropological inquiry from within. The filmmaker’s courageous gesture of looking at an extraordinary person within his community and her quest to help heal the scars and stigma of assaulted women renders an urgent portrait - one which stems from cultural knowledge and experience and a desire for localized social justice.
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SPECIAL MENTION

GOOD LUCK
by Ben Russell (France, Germany, 2017)

Motivation: "Our special mention goes to a film that achieves an intense and visceral cinematic experience through its formal, artistic choices, as well as through its curiosity in examining questions of labour, precarity and community via clever bifurcation. By looking so closely at bodies at work in an age of global capitalism, while lending insight into the strength of community and the possibilities of collective hope in disparate parts of the world, this film sets the viewer on a journey that is at once sensitive, expansive, awe-inspiring and moving."

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"THE GAZE OF THE OTHER - The Challenge of Dialogue between Cultures and Religions" AWARD